Duchamp, Marcel (redirected from Marcel Duchamp)

Duchamp, Marcel (märsĕl` düshäN`), 1887–1968, French painter, brother of Raymond Duchamp-Villon and half-brother of Jacques Villon. Duchamp is noted for his cubist-futurist painting Nude Descending a Staircase, depicting continuous action with a series of overlapping figures; it was the cause of great controversy when exhibited in 1913 at the New York Armory Show. Duchamp invented ready-mades—commonplace objects—e.g., the urinal entitled Fountain, which he exhibited as works of art. In 1915 he was a co-founder of a Dada group in New York. After 1920, Duchamp produced a series of elaborate nonfunctional machines. He emigrated to the United States in 1942. Many of his works, including the celebrated symbolic construction The Bride stripped bare by her Bachelors, even (1915–23), are at the Philadelphia Mus. of Art.

Bibliography

See catalog with study ed. by A. D'Harnoncourt and K. McShine (1973); R. E. Kuenzli and F. M. Naumann, ed., Marcel Duchamp: Artist of the Century (1989); P. Hulten, ed., Marcel Duchamp: Work and Life (1993).

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Duchamp, Marcel

(born July 28, 1887, Blainville, France—died Oct. 2, 1968, Neuilly) French artist and art innovator. In 1913 he caused a sensation at the Armory Show with his painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912), which combined the principles of Cubism and Futurism. His irreverence for conventional aesthetic standards then led him to devise his famous ready-mades: in 1913 he exhibited Bicycle Wheel, which was simply an ordinary bicycle wheel displayed as a work of art, and in 1917 he exhibited a urinal he entitled Fountain. Intended as a derisive gesture against the excessive importance attached to works of art, the ready-mades ushered in an era when contemporary art became in itself a mixture of creation and criticism. In Paris in 1919 he established contact with the Dada group of artists, whose nihilistic ideas he had anticipated. During this period he exhibited a photograph of the Mona Lisa with a moustache and goatee added, a gesture that expressed the Dadaists' scorn for the art of the past. He greatly influenced the Surrealists, and his attitude toward art and society led to Pop art and other modern and postmodern movements. A legend in his lifetime, he is considered one of the leading spirits of 20th-century art.

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Duchamp, Marcel (1887–1968) artist; born in Blainville, France (brother of Raymond Duchamp-Villon and half brother of Jacques Villon). He became famous by exhibiting Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) at the New York Armory Show (1913), and by being a founder of the Société Anonyme, New York (1920), an organization promoting nonobjective art. An intermittent visitor to New York, he led the American Dada movement that tried to convey the absurdity of life. He was also among the first to use mobile works and found (junk) objects. His glass, wire, and painted foil construction, The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915–23), was one of his last major works; he virtually abandoned art in his final decades and concentrated on playing chess. One of his most famous pieces was L.H.O.O.Q, a reproduction of Leonardo's Mona Lisa to which he added a moustache and goatee. He became a U.S. citizen in 1955.